Walking through the empty, echoing hallways of the Ledyard Middle School on Monday nights brings some familiar sounds to one’s ears: the sharp squeak of sneakers stopping and starting on a gym floor, the pounding of bouncing basketballs and the enthusiastic shouts of fierce competitors.
Upon entering the gym the sight that greets you may not be what you’d expect. Instead of a teenage recreational league or even a men’s league for that matter, the basketball junkies who gather on Monday nights are a group of senior women ranging in age from their 50s to their early 70s—all are just as capable of driving the lane for a contested lay-up as draining a step-back jumper.
With no senior women’s basketball leagues to speak of in Connecticut, these women, who hail from various parts of the state, come together on their own usually two nights a week, Mondays in Ledyard and Wednesdays in Hartford, to play 3-on-3 pick-up games. And while a league would be nice, it’s just as well, for the goals of these women are much larger than simple league play.
Last year, the group sent a number of teams to the 2007 Connecticut Senior Games Women’s Basketball Tournament, three of which, the CT Sisters, CT Bouncers, and CT High Fives, won gold in their respective age ranges of 55 to 59, 60 to 64, and 65 and over. And with this year’s Connecticut Senior Games Women’s Basketball Tournament scheduled for May 31, the teams are hard at work preparing for their challenge.
While a good showing at the Connecticut Senior Games is certainly a priority, many of the women have their sights set on a much larger goal: the National Senior Games in 2009. In 2007, the CT Bouncers, CT Sisters, and CT High Fives all made the National Senior Games and each placed fifth in their age group out of a total of more than 25 teams.
Julie Bradley, 64, of Gales Ferry, who plays on the CT Bouncers and was one of the women instrumental in growing the group that plays on Mondays and Wednesdays, explained that the group actually started as a 20s and 30s league in Ledyard that played on Wednesday nights at the Juliet W. Long School in Gales Ferry, but began to dissipate over time. Bradley and a few others still wanting a venue in which to compete did their best to drum up some kindred spirits.
“We put word in the senior center news, and I wrote an article in a senior magazine that was published a few times, just to let people know that we were having this group up there, and we got up to about eight or 10 people," Bradley explained. “So I asked Kim [Laviguere] over at Parks and Rec if by any chance the gym was open at the middle school, because the gym at Juliet Long is so slippery. So we moved over to the middle school on Mondays and we got more people, because many of these women go up to Hartford to play on Wednesdays. We’ve now had as many as 15 women show up on any given night, and I have an e-mail list that probably has about 30 names on it and we recruit from wherever we can and we get whoever comes.”
And come they do, as participation has generally increased from year to year. And according to studies, organized sports for senior women is a growing nationwide trend.
A survey completed in 2005 by the National Sporting Goods Association showed that more than 130,000 women over the age of 55 played basketball around once a week, as compared to 1995 when only 16,000 were doing so. Also in 2005, around 500 women representing 47 different states competed in the National Senior Games Women’s Basketball Tournament in Pittsburgh. These new leagues and highly competitive meets have been a blessing for older women who were never given the chance to compete as teens in the pre-Title IX era, and for the women who were fortunate enough to play and now can continue competing in the sport they love.
Jane Grilley, of the Colchester area, began playing with the Ledyard group just two years ago and is on the CT Sirens, a 60 to 64-year-old team. Grilley has seen the gamut of the evolution of women’s basketball. Before she was born, Grilley’s mother had played in a semiprofessional women’s basketball league in the 1930s, so as Grilley explained, the game was in her blood. Lucky enough to play at a high school that offered women’s basketball before the Title IX enactment, Grilley chuckled to herself as she described how different the game once was, as the girls back then weren’t allowed to run up and down the floor and were only allowed to dribble twice before having to pass.
“God forbid we would break a sweat!” Grilley joked.
Instead, there were three stationary players on defense and on offense. Once a defender pulled in a rebound they would pass the ball down the length of the court to an awaiting teammate on offense. Once Grilley had graduated on to college, the game had already begun to change, and by 1970 when she played for Penn State University, the women’s game mirrored the men’s game, five-on-five full-court basketball, something that was vastly different for many of the girls who weren’t used to running the floor.
“Everybody was adjusting,” Grilley explained. “The offensive end was like second nature to me, because that’s all I had played all along. But it took some work to get used to getting back on defense and understanding that whole other half of the game.”
Now, Grilley said, she relishes the opportunity to still get out on the court and be competitive.
Bradley also comes from a very good basketball pedigree.
“I started when I was born. I was supposed to be a boy, you see,” Bradley said joking. “Back then, you have to understand, girls didn’t get anything. Every Saturday morning when I was in elementary school, the boys would go over to the high school and play, they had leagues and everything, and I would go, but I couldn’t play. We were always turned away and I knew it was wrong, but in middle school we were able to play in gym and so when I became a freshman, I tried out for the basketball team and made varsity and played varsity for four years.”
Bradley not only made the all-state team in Vermont, she still holds the record for most points scored in a single game: 70. She moved on to play at Southern Connecticut State University, choosing the school because of its intercollegiate women’s athletic programs. The school was a pioneer in women’s sports and was, in many ways, the predecessor to the University of Connecticut’s now dominating program, as Bradley and her teammates routinely dispatched the UConn team year in and year out.
Maintaining her love for the sport, Bradley went on to start the women’s basketball program at Eastern Connecticut State University where she is now in the school’s hall of fame as a pioneer in women’s sports. After her collegiate career, Bradley settled in Gales Ferry and taught at the Williams School for 17 years, coaching girl’s basketball, field hockey, and softball. Yet through it all, Bradley still has the desire to compete, and has an easy answer for why she and her teammates have chosen to still play basketball, a contact sport, instead of other, more traditional forms of exercise for seniors, like yoga.
“Because we want to sweat,” Bradley said laughing. “There’s a love for the sport. A lot of those women that did not have the opportunity to play earlier now have had the opportunity and just can’t get enough of it…Participation is growing every year.”
And just as the national trend indicates, participation in Ledyard, and Connecticut, should continue to increase, especially since that group will now be a part of some serious exposure.
“Last year we were able to play at the Mohegan Sun Arena before a Connecticut Sun game,” Bradley said. “This year the group is getting the chance to play at halftime, so it should help our cause…We want to show all these people who are sitting in the audience, these older women, that there is something there for you. We’re sure you might have played in high school—just come out. You don’t have to be a Diana Taurasi, but just come out and have a good time.”
While Bradley and the Ledyard women’s basketball group are deserving of much admiration, Bradley expressed how grateful she and the others are that Ledyard has been so supportive and accommodating, and said she hopes the group can continue to grow and prosper.
For more information on women’s senior basketball, and the array of other senior games available, visit www.nsga.com, or contact Bradley at juliebradley3@gmail.com. The exhibition game at the Mohegan Sun Arena will be held during halftime of the Sun’s game vs. Seattle on Aug. 31.